


Loophole

by ItsaVikingThing



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: Bad Decisions, Determinism, Diary/Journal, Free Will, Murder, Post-Game, Sacrifice Chloe Ending, Time Powers, Trying to Make Sense of Them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-26
Updated: 2017-05-26
Packaged: 2018-11-05 05:39:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11007126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ItsaVikingThing/pseuds/ItsaVikingThing
Summary: Hi.My name is Maxine Caulfield. If you're reading this, you've gotten hold of my journal.Rude!If you're still reading this, you've entered a good news/bad news/good news situation.The first piece of good news is that the second piece of good news is a surprise.The bad news is I have to explain quite a lot of things to you before I get to the surprise.Please bear with me during this transitional period.





	Loophole

Maybe it's best to start here: I'm eating breakfast in a diner ten feet from a fisherman I once killed by electrocution.

He doesn't know anything about it. For him, it never happened.

He smiles at me whenever I come in. Not in a creepy way, either. Just in a small town, shared space kind of way.

Trust me. I made sure.

Oh, I meant to say, I didn't kill him on purpose!

Okay, maybe this wasn't a good place to start.

* * *

What about this? My best friend's funeral.

She'd given me my first real kiss, less than an hour ago. But here I was by her coffin, and she was four days dead.

Wait. Don't make this weird. I'm just talking about time travel.

* * *

Okay, so it's three days later. I almost burned this stupid thing.

Note to self: still not ready to joke about her.

Her who?

If you have to ask, you don't deserve to know. In fact, I think that's all you're getting about her, reader.

* * *

Hey again.

I'm back. I've given this a lot of thought. I'm going to take one last shot at explaining this.

Don't worry, this won't be my whole life story. I just need to try to make sense of the last few very strange months.

And of the discovery I made. And what I'm going to do with it.

I guess, while I'm explaining things, I should point out that where I've drawn a line represents a significant pause between writing sessions. It won't always be days, but it'll probably be longer than a bathroom break.

It's really just whenever the writing gets disrupted for some reason.

I want to get my thoughts down raw. This should be a cathartic process. I'm unburdening myself in these pages.

And it's important to be honest. Which is why I'm writing long-hand. You can see everything I'm putting down as it occurs to me in the moment.

It's going to be a bit disorganised, probably, but I think this is the right way to do it.

Anyway, if you see a line like the one I'll need to draw in a minute, you know what's up.

Gotta run. My bus is here.

* * *

Hey. Been a while.

How long a while?

Oh, reader. That's a good question.

I'm sure you've noticed that our experience of time is inconsistent. We've all felt like the clock's moving slower when we're nearing the end of the school day, or work, or a bad date.

Right? Time feels different sometimes, in spite of the fact that we all agree on the length of an hour or a day. (Mostly. Don't get pedantic, reader, it'll make everything move much more slowly.)

The thing I'm trying to get at is, I actually do experience time differently from everyone else. A lot differently.

You see, there comes a moment in every young Max's life when she discovers the ability to reverse time.

Usually this awareness is birthed in trauma.

I say usually, not because I know it for sure, but just because I like to think there's at least one Max out there who found out about time manipulation during an orgasm or a really good slice of Black Forest gâteau.

Yes, I have intense feelings about cake. Like that's the weirdest thing I'm admitting to here.

Young Max, whether in trauma or bliss, discovers that she can literally turn back the metaphorical clock. She can rewind time, roughly fifteen minutes into the past.

And that's not all.

If she concentrates on a photograph she's in, she can go back to that precise moment in time.

Well, her consciousness goes back. Into her earlier body. And she can't stay for long or stray outside the area shown in the photograph. But she can change things. And they stay changed when she pops back to the present. Into her same body that she left.

Make sense?

I hope so, because this is the most important power of the bunch.

Oh, and if she doesn't mind aneurysms, she can stop time altogether.

Pretty wowser, right?

But wait! There's more.

Max isn't affected by her own power. Which means she can move through frozen time, keep hold of things she picks up before a rewind, and she remembers everything she learns even after she makes stuff not have happened.

Oh, man. I think I'm going to drop the third person stuff, now. I hope you're clear on what I can do.

Well, as clear as you can be.

You know, describing this is more stressful than I thought it would be.

* * *

Okay, that time I just paused to go get some cake.

It's no Black Forest gâteau, just overpriced Red Velvet I got from the gas station across from my motel.

Did I tell you I moved? More accurate to say I'm moving, I guess. Like, just around for a while.

There's no place like home, right? Well, no place feels like home for me these days.

Do you feel that way sometimes?

I can't know how many people are going to read this, but I'm imagining a type. I think you're the type that understands that feeling.

I think the longer I work on this, the better I'll get to know you, unknown reader. Does that sound paradoxical? Good. I live in a carefully managed ecosystem of paradoxes. You'll need to be able to handle that if you're going to stick with me.

What were we talking about?

Cake!

This one doesn't taste great, but any cake in a storm, you know?

Which is what we writers call a segue. See, there's a big thing I didn't tell you about.

The storm that killed my home town.

Don't google it, it didn't stay happened.

Look, when I first got my powers, I tried to use them for good.

Mostly.

Okay, I used them with good intentions.

Well. Mostly.

Anyway, I tried to save my friend.

And I did.

But, since I already told you I was at her funeral (spoilers, Max!), you know it didn't stick.

* * *

I just got up and walked around for a few minutes, but rules are rules and that was a significant pause.

I stick to my rules these days. I think it's important to have structure in your life.

Crap. I'm stalling.

Okay. Deep breath. Get this done, Max.

My friend died a hero. She died because of me. Well, okay, the first time she died because of her. But even then, I could have saved her. If I'd just

* * *

I used my powers the first time to bring my murdered friend back to life.

This created a number of problems.

The biggest one was the storm. It seemed at the time like the consequence of me using my powers over and over was reality getting all twisted up and unleashing a twister in response.

It ripped my home town apart. Killed a lot of people.

She didn't want things that way.

So I went back to right before the first time I used my powers, and I changed it so that I never used them. My friend died as a result.

And the storm never came. And all the other terrible things that happened that week were either avoided or brought into the sunlight.

I was really messed up about it all. But at her funeral, I had an epiphany.

All of this had happened for a reason. I really was given a gift, but it wasn't power over time. It was the chance to spend more time with her. My best friend. My first love. After years apart, she could've died just feet away from me, never knowing I'd come back to her.

Instead, I found my powers and we got five shitty, horrible, vile, fucked up days together.

And then she died again.

It sucks, but if those are the only two options on the table, I know which one I'm picking. Every single time.

That epiphany helped.

It helped me understand that in life, you really don't get second chances.

You shouldn't let fear stop you from reaching out, reconnecting with that someone the years elided from you.

Or you should just make a point of grabbing your mom, or your brother, or that cute guy in the record store, and hugging them and telling them you love them.

You never know when you won't have another chance.

Don't make assumptions about how much time you have left. It's always less than you think.

Maybe stop reading my journal and go outside for a while. And when you come back, never pick this up again.

That's the best I can do for you, reader. Not my fault if you don't listen.

Oh, but maybe don't actually grab the cute guy. Or girl. Just maintain a respectful distance and ask them if they want to get coffee some time. Don't tell them you love them if you don't really know them.

I wasn't thinking things through when I wrote that part.

* * *

I was telling you about my moment of clarity, wasn't I?

My best friend died. My other friends lived. Bad people were caught and punished.

And I was raw. But I could see the road ahead of me. I could see the prospect of healing.

It was a strange feeling. Peace in the eye of a storm of grief.

It lasted maybe five minutes. Until I saw the big fat paradox glaring me in the face.

Maybe you already figured it out. Good for you, if you did.

Back in a few, reader. Go on ahead without me.

Don't worry. I always catch up eventually.

* * *

I just spent a whole loop eating ice cream.

Work related, I swear! I needed to get my food photog skills levelled up in a hurry, but why let good ice cream go to waste when there's no calorific consequences?

Lemon is the best flavour. The very best. Trust me on this. I was very scientific in my ice cream eating.

Anyway.

Today, reader, I'm going to tell you about the Biff loops.

It was basically the first real experiment I came up with. Cliche, yeah, but useful!

I just did the lottery though. Easier that way.

I was only going to try it once, but then I had a talk with Warren and he helped me map out a more rigorous approach.

Three loops total. One where I keep the money and do nothing with it. One where I give it all away. And one where I spend it in hedonistic excess.

The control element takes care of itself once I close the loop, which is the real beauty of it. The exact same week lived out two different ways.

Being a millionaire is an interesting way to spend the better part of a month.

You probably think the hedonistic week was my favourite, but you are so wrong. Shame on you, reader!

Partying and buying expensive crap was actually kind of awful and I'm really glad those memories are hazy.

There's stuff you do sometimes that you don't want to look at too closely ever again. You know what I'm talking about, right?

Crap. That's my work phone. Freelance photography pays the bills, so gotta go!

* * *

Talking about this stuff is confusing. Living it is worse. Maybe it's thinking about it that's the real problem, though.

I'm working on being more proactive. I'm making positive changes in my life. I'm determined to do good things.

We'll both see if that works out, I guess.

* * *

Holy shit! Do I have to tell you I nearly flunked English?

So, uh, yeah. I've been reading this back.

I may have forgotten to explain a few things.

Like the paradox that turned me away from the road to recovery.

So here it is. The thought that wrecked my peace of mind:

I knew the storm was the result of me using my powers. But I wasn't sure how.

Was it just the repeated use of my powers that broke things? Or was it some kind of butterfly effect?

By changing the destiny of my friends, was I creating a ripple effect? One that would spread out and affect many more people down the line and so on and so forth until, BOOM!

Giant death tornado comes calling.

If it was all on the rewinds, then I could try to avoid using my powers and live a normal life.

But if it was the butterfly effect, I had a real problem. The world might break again.

Because, you see, my time travels, my lost week with her, had made me a different person. I was changed from who I might have been. I was going to treat other people differently than I might have.

Even if I never used my powers again, I was a stone dropped into the pond. I was the butterfly flapping its wings beneath the shadow of a descending shoe.

Peace fled, guilt and grief made a strong comeback, and I was a complete mess for a couple of weeks.

It took me a while to realise that the shoe wasn't going to drop.

No new storm was coming, not because of me. Which wasn't as much of a relief as you might think.

The paradox clawed at my mind, you see. I was different, because of my powers. I remembered everything that had happened and unhappened because of my powers.

If it wasn't things being changed from a set course that brought the storm, it had to be using my powers that caused the problem, right?

But what was it about my powers that had that effect?

I realised that I didn't understand anything. And the need to understand became an obsession.

* * *

I've started a few loops with the intention of learning physics and the kind of serious math people use to work abstract things like this out.

I think there's enough clues in that last sentence to work out how far I got.

You strike me as the type who likes to sift for clues about people in what they say.

Don't make that face. You're the one reading a young woman's private journal, remember?

It's okay. At this point, I want you to keep reading.

I came up with some questions, but I don't have the right kind of brain for building theoretical models to test abstract ideas. I decided I needed more data. There was only one to get it.

So I started the tests.

First I took a selfie in the safety of my room in my parents' house.

I moved back there for a while. Because, you know.

Then I tried to rewind time.

It worked, which I hadn't expected. I hadn't used my powers since she died, after all.

I didn't want her to sacrifice herself just to start the whole mess over again.

But I knew that if things went bad because of the rewind, I could reset things with the photo trick.

Which was the next thing I tested. I know, I know. It should have been the first thing I tested.

I was still learning.

* * *

You might be wondering why I would even try to use my powers again, given how it all worked out the first time.

Actually, you've probably been wondering for ages if I'm delusional, so let's deal with that one first.

No. I'm not delusional.

Is my mental health peachy keen?

No!

But that's a perfectly normal response to all the horrible things I've been through.

And done.

All the stuff about the powers is true. I can't exactly prove it to you, because you're reading a journal. There's no interactivity possible here.

But I will say this. Reader, if we ever meet? I will blow your mind.

Back to the big question. Why did I start using my powers again?

Because I wanted to understand why it had all happened.

And because my photo jump power seemed like a loophole. Something I could exploit without anyone getting hurt. Or at least, not getting hurt in a way that couldn't be undone.

And that in itself was the problem that nagged at me. I could use my powers without breaking things! Clearly! There had to be a way to use my powers safely. There had to be a way to get things right!

Later, I found the real loophole. It was not what I expected. I was disappointed, at first.

I found a purpose, though. A way to use these powers for something. But we're not at that part yet. We'll get there, you and I.

* * *

I started telling you about the rewinds. And the Biff loops. I still haven't explained loops.

I'm the actual worst.

Well, the worst writer. We've both done worse things than fail to organise a narrative effectively, haven't we?

So you've probably figured out by now what a loop is. Just in case, though: I take a selfie every day. Then I live out my week, just doing normal stuff. Exercise, writing this journal, travelling, taking pictures.

I keep my head down. I don't rewind. I minimise contact with other people. I follow everybody else's rules.

This is the baseline of my life.

I break the routine when I want to loop. I do what's necessary. I learn whatever I can. I use my rewind to acquire stuff I need. Or I do things like develop skills for my jobs, or eat ice cream for a couple of days.

Then I jump back to the start of the week, or the previous day, or whatever. I leave my past self a note about anything I might need to flag up. Then past me does the baseline and we catch up further down the road.

So with the lottery, I take a photo an hour or so before ticket sales stop. I watch the numbers getting drawn, jump back to the photo, and put on my ticket. I jump forward again, and I'm rich! Then I do my thing for a week, jump back to the original photo, and don't put the ticket on, resetting things. Simple!

Here's another quirk I don't think I mentioned yet. One that confused me for a long time. Say I photo jump back and change something. Even if it's only to write a quick note to myself. When I return to the present, it's not the present I left at. It's the point from which I left plus all the time spent in the past.

In terms of my consciousness, if not my physical body, I'm actually on a linear track.

That's interesting, huh? That suggests things about the way the universe operates. I'll try to get into all that later. There's some other stuff you need to hear first.

When I return to the (relative) present, no matter what I've actually done, as far as everyone else is concerned, I'm living a boring, normal, fairly healthy, kinda hipster, kinda lonely life.

* * *

The rewind test was to try and figure out if it was the act of rewinding itself that was the problem. Seattle maybe wasn't the best place to start. My home town's really small. When things started breaking, those warning signs were easy to see in that environment.

A city? Harder to track until things were really far along. Which meant serious, continuous abuse of my powers. Which meant that the small rewinds I tried here and there were inconclusive.

So I jumped back and left a note to myself not to rewind time.

My second ever loop.

Almost a complete waste of time. But it did suggest that the rewind, used sparingly, wasn't enough to bring on the storm.

Loop three was different. I thought bigger.

Getting hold of a police scanner was easy. The magic of eBay, no time powers required.

Slipping out of the house and lurking around shady parts of town waiting for bad things to happen was tougher.

I said I thought bigger, not better, okay?

In the end it was a mugging gone wrong that did the trick. I was able to get to the scene of the crime quickly enough to rewind back to when the muggee was alive.

Shall I describe the scene, reader?

Dark night, quiet street, bad part of town. Sweet young couple accosted by man with knife. Boy in inevitable letterman jacket refuses to hand over wallet. Boy gets stabbed in the heart in the scuffle.

Girlfriend is indelibly marked by those events for the rest of her life.

Poor thing. None of them really deserved for it to happen that way. But if I'm honest, it's her expression that stays with me. The rest of it is kind of a blur.

I'm not going to tell you how many goes it took to change things. At that point in time, everything I knew about combat techniques can be summed up thus: curl up into a ball and hope the bear goes away.

I had a window of about two minutes.

Eventually I came up with a solution involving a can of soda, an off-duty police officer I found half a block away, a burner phone I stole, and enough running to convince me that I really needed to do more cardio.

Letterman jacket survived the night.

He got hit by a bus the next day.

The day after that, he choked on a meatball sub.

The day after that, he died in a storm that wiped out hundreds of lives.

During that event, I went back to that first photo. When I got back to the storm-free present, I read about how he died three days ago.

I realise that I could have conducted that experiment better. There were too many variables in there to draw accurate conclusions.

Reader? You're thinking I should have run the loop again to start eliminating variables, aren't you?

Go fuck yourself, reader.

* * *

Sorry about last time.

Okay, odds are, you've been thinking about sex.

Do you want to hear about the loops I've spent with my breath heating someone else's skin?

Shall I tell you about the men and women I've fucked?

Do you want to hear about the rewind and how it's the ultimate pick up tool?

Reader, that's gross.

This much I'll say. I prefer mindful gratification to the alternatives. I've made enough mistakes to realise that.

I guess the only other thing to say is that I have to lie to everybody, all the time, these days.

I haven't had any kind of meaningful relationship since I left my home town.

Reader, please. Of course I'm lying to you, too! But mostly it's the things I'm leaving out. You're learning more than anyone else ever has.

Except her. I told her everything, before the end.

* * *

When I went back to school in my home town, after the rewind experiment ended so badly, that's when I approached Warren.

I told him I was writing a story about time travel. I asked a bunch of questions, and that helped me come up with better experiments than I could have alone.

Warren's a science geek, if that wasn't obvious. He's a nice guy, too. Things seem to be working out for him, if his emails are to be relied upon.

You know, Warren had a crush on me. Reading between the lines, I think he's glad we never got together. I think he still thinks about it, though.

I guess I just admitted that I do, too.

Fuck it. Let's ride this tangent out. What's one more between us?

I hooked up with a girl in school.

This is so embarrassing.

I thought it happened during a loop.

Awwwwkward.

It took a while to convince her that I wasn't pulling some passive-aggressive revenge thing. I was just going through some shit and I hadn't been sure how to handle our encounter.

It wasn't exactly a lie, either.

We dated for a while. It was doomed from the start, reader, dooooooomed.

But I couldn't take any of it away from her. That would have been shittier than she deserved.

So. I sort of keep in touch with a few old friends, but I think it's best for everyone if I keep my distance.

She still keeps in touch. My ex. Reading between the lines?

I try not to. You see, I miss her.

But I have miles to go and secrets to keep.

I know you understand, reader.

That was maybe my favourite part of the Biff loops, actually. Secrets, I mean. Maybe that's weird?

My first test was the one where I jumped back and put on the winning lottery numbers and then did nothing with the hundred million I won.

Knowing I was richer than Victoria, and no one else knowing? I dunno, I kinda liked it.

Until the end of the experiment, of course. When nothing bad happened. That was not a good feeling.

Thinking about it now, it is messed up, huh? Maybe the thing I should have been most worried about was my moral compass.

I'm not sure it always points the right way.

Which makes the result of the Biff loops all the more problematic.

I hate to do this to you, but I need to go do some prep before I shoot someone.

We're getting to the meaty stuff, don't you fear. It might take me a while to get it written, but you just have to skip your eye over the dividing line, and there it will be.

Why, reader! You're about to time travel. I'm so proud!

* * *

Hey, Max.

I know this is kind of a breach of protocol, but we have a problem.

I went on a date.

I know you won't be mad about that, even though it adds to your stress.

But you're going to be mad I'm writing about it in here.

The thing is, I don't think you'd ever tell our reader the truth about me. And I think it might help to get this out in the open.

More importantly, you need to hear me, Max. Before it's too late.

Hey, reader. My name is Maxine Caulfield.

No, not that one. But also yes, this one.

When Max goes on a loop, she has to jump back to her past self's body. She doesn't leave an empty body behind.

Similarly, when Max Prime (that's your Max, reader) jumps forward again, she doesn't leave an empty shell. Someone has to do all the interim, baseline, linear life stuff.

That someone is me!

Well, at least, this time it is.

You see, from my perspective, I suddenly find myself looking at a note Max Prime has left. I have all her memories, right up to the moment of selfie taking. But I know I'm not her. We've officially branched.

From that point, I have the reins. Right up until whenever she jumped back from.

What happens then?

There are theories.

One, I cease to exist. I'm overwritten by Max Prime. Ave atque vale, Maximus Secundus.

Two, we branch off from each other into separate realities. I continue on as the new Max Prime. Obviously, we used to worry about the consequences of leaving a new Max in a reality fucked over by too many rewinds.

We're very careful about rewinds, though. Rewinds are only to be used in emergencies and only to improve Max options, not limit anybody else's. There's strict rules in place. Max Prime strives to be ethical in her use of time manipulation.

Three, my entire reality ceases to exist once it gets subsumed by Max Prime's again.

This is maybe the most likely scenario. Max Prime will tell you more about that, I think. There was this one time with two moons in the sky in the first loop which pushes me in this direction, though. Like, our powers made it hard for the universe to know which branch was the main one? So freaky things like that happened, until things got put back on track.

Basically, if that's true, I have a few hours until I cease to exist.

Which is why I'm choosing to intrude here. Max Prime will burn all my other notes. The only part of me that's going to live on after this is likely the memory of things she never did, locked away in her head.

It's one reason she moves around so much. She runs a lot of loops. There's a lot of blank spots in her life these days. It makes it harder and harder to maintain relationships with people.

Okay, reader. I think we're done. You can skip this next part. I'm just going to talk about my date. Max Prime will be back after the next dividing line with more of the freaky time stuff.

Bye, reader. You won't hear from me again.

Max.

You remember Saira? The really cute barista? Totes asked me out!

She actually asked if I wanted to get coffee sometime, then got all flustered cuz, well, yeah. Obviously.

We went to an actual restaurant and had actual deep dish pizza and I had actual fun.

Saira's really sweet. We kissed.

I like her.

The thing is, you're on this path you've set yourself. You feel like there's no turning back. You can't have normal, you can't give someone else what they need.

Dude. What if you're wrong?

The way you think about loopholes isn't quite right. You don't have anything to hide behind.

Saira wants to see me again. I made a date Friday.

I know, right?

We're only one loop different. Go meet her.

It was a really good kiss.

I left you all the relevant details in the usual place. I wanted you to see this first.

And, yes. I saw the news. I know why you started this. But if I have a tomorrow, it won't be spent taking a single step further down that road.

And neither should you.

You of all people should know about turning back, Max.

Go on the date.

Good luck, Max.

* * *

Well. Shit. That's awkward. I'll need to have a think about this.

We'll talk later.

* * *

Reader? I made my decision. About all of it. I don't know if it's the right one. But it's my choice to make. I need to take care of something. See you down the road.

* * *

I'm in a hotel. A nice one. In Manhattan.

I think we understand each other.

So! Where the fuck were we?

I call them the Biff loops because of the obvious movie reference and because of the amorality of fate. Fate does not give shit one about you, reader. This is the wisdom I have learned.

When I won that money, in each timeline, I was depriving somebody else.

I was violating the space-time continuum, assuming there was a single path marked out.

In two of the three loops, there was a storm.

No storm on the baseline. No storm on the loop where I kept the money.

Hedonism loop? Oh, yeah, shit got wrecked.

Charity loop? I had stay in it longer than the rest. But, yes. Storm.

Common factor? It wasn't the rewinds. I didn't use any on those loops, to keep the variables to a minimum.

(Thanks, science guy.)

No, it was the lives I saved.

I mean, the charity one should be obvious, right?

In the hedonism loop, I threw a party. There was a house fire the same night. A girl my age, Jane Ford, only survived because she went to my party.

The next day, she got stung by a wasp. Anaphylaxis took care of the rest.

Next day, she died in the storm.

I reset the loop. Jane died in the fire.

I ran one more Biff loop. I spent the money on myself. I did things that only benefitted me. It was worse than the hedonism loop, in its way.

Guess what? No storm.

* * *

I got some useful insights when I talked things over with Warren. After begging me to let him beta read my novel (sorry, science guy), he helped me come up with a metaphor I like.

I'm not saying this is how it works, it's just kinda my best guess, based on what I've observed.

Okay. Here goes.

Imagine you're walking down the street and you pass by a book store. You notice a book you want is on sale in the window.

Okay, but you usually buy ebooks and you don't want to miss your train.

But it's right there, and it's really cheap and it'll only take a minute.

You need to make a decision.

Go one way and one set of things happen, even if it seems like nothing much happens.

Go into the store, and you notice that, hey, crazy coincidence! The author's doing a signing. Right now in fact.

Stay or go.

Let's say you stay.

You find the signing in the upper floor. You join the line. A few minutes later, a cute guy gets into line behind you. Your eyes meet. You smile. You get to chatting. You click.

Snuggle city just gained two new citizens!

Is this the way it was always going to be?

Or did you create your reality through your choices?

Pretty basic stuff, I know. Probably anyone who actually knows much of anything about physics or philosophy is sneering at me right now.

Well, sneer away reader, while I propose my theory.

In certain kinds of games, when a player makes a decision, there are multiple possible outcomes, limited by the resources of the technology and the designers.

What if the universe is a bit like that?

What if the universe, to present a seamless user experience, pre-loads outcomes? Parallel universes are loaded up, or, I dunno, they get metaphysically closer at key moments in our lives. Maybe not even whole other universes. Just the bits of them needed to map out the possibilities relevant to the current decision.

Once the decision is made, the necessary information is fed into the main timeline and the other possible branch points disappear. From your perspective, it's all one big, contiguous experience.

My perspective is different. I can bounce reality back and forth to explore every immediate outcome of a decision.

I know that reality isn't a single smooth experience. But that's how it wants to be. (Or, sure, maybe how it's designed to be, reader. I remain agnostic, if you're interested.)

What's my point? I think the rewinds put stress on the system, but they're like a cheat code. It might cause some pretty bad glitches, it might let you see things you weren't meant to, but it's still part of the system. Remember how I said my consciousness is still on a linear track? I think that's why. I think the universe still tries to order things for me in a way my brain is designed to process them. There's allowances for the rewind. There's times when it's okay.

What's not okay, it seems, is using those cheat codes to mess with someone else's choices.

That's when the system gets overstressed. When you mess not just with your own possibility space, but other people's, too.

Let me give you a concrete example.

I go into a bathroom. A boy comes in with a gun. I hide. Another girl comes in to talk to the boy.

They argue.

Boy shoots girl two.

I choose to do nothing.

Free will all over the place. People making decisions, expanding and contracting the pool of options to reach an agreed upon reality.

Rewind.

Before boy can shoot, I hit the fire alarm. Girl two knees boy in the groin. She gets away alive.

Good news for girl two, except the established consensus was, she died. I've hacked into their experience. I've overruled boy and girl two's decisions. Instead of reducing the possibilities into a consensus, I'm forcing endlessly multiplying options into being.

The system strains to accommodate this new outcome. Glitches increase. There's a memory leak.

There's a crash.

The storm is like a patch, brought in to fix the problem area by ruthlessly shrinking the options down to a manageable level.

The photo jump is rolling back to a pre-hack state.

* * *

I just reread this. I don't know if it makes sense to you, reader, but I guess the point of it all is that the rewind is only safe to use when it affects my choices.

When I use it to override other people's decisions, it causes problems.

Which is really fucked up, because if you or I decide to kill someone tomorrow, that's normal in the universe's book. If I decide I'm going to rewind and stop you from killing someone, things fall apart. If I use my power to bring a person back from the dead, it breaks their chain of decisions, and your chain of decisions, and creates a bunch of futures that the universe hasn't budgeted for. The system reacts violently to prevent it shutting down completely.

Not because of some moral imperative. Not because of any inherent value placed in life. Just because it's not how the universe works.

I don't think there's a grand design, reader. Just really shitty code.

* * *

Her name was Chloe Price. She said I was her hero. What kind of hero can't use their powers to save anyone?

* * *

I've got some things to confess. That's where I've been going with all this. Because even though I suspect that karma is a bogus concept, I still feel guilty. Is that the right word?

I think maybe I just feel bad. And I think it's less because of what I've done and more to do with not being able to tell anyone about it.

This whole rambling diatribe you've sat so patiently through has been to set up this part of the story.

My loops are a way of cheating through life. A way of learning what I need to know and getting where I need to go that ordinary people can't do.

But that's not quite the same as a loophole.

Bryce showed me the way. I owe him a lot more than I was able to give him.

He showed me the flaw in my thinking. He set me on the path. Let me tell you about him.

Bryce Hayes isn't a psycho. He's just someone who was driving on a dark and rain-slick night who killed a college kid in a hit and run.

Bad situation. But after Bryce spent days stewing over it, he realised that there were no witnesses to the event, no physical evidence at the scene. Yes, a young man was dead. Yes, that was tragic. But what was to be gained by Bryce turning himself in? How was it better to ruin two lives over an accident?

I know, reader. I wouldn't make those kinds of excuses either.

The thing about Bryce is that a couple of years later, he got passed over for promotion by a younger colleague. A woman, no less!

He'd got away with killing someone by accident. He'd definitely get away with killing someone if he made an actual plan, right?

Bryce ran into Miranda Wallace with his car on a dark and rainy night. But he didn't quite get away clean this time. There was a witness.

Bad luck for him, it was me.

Bad luck for me, too. You see, I tried to rewind. I tried to save her. Old habits and what not.

In the end I resigned myself to getting his licence plate. I let him zoom off into the night. I would call the police and pass on the information. That should be that.

Except obviously I checked Miranda for a pulse. She had one.

Maybe I could save her, and punish the perpetrator, and it would all work out, because I wouldn't need my powers.

I made the call and I stayed by her side and I waited.

Have you ever tried to offer comfort to a badly wounded woman? Have you looked up at headlights, expecting an ambulance or a police car, and seen a killer's face at the wheel of his murder weapon?

It's disconcerting.

Bryce came back to finish Miranda. I saw it in his face: strained, strange, and laughing. I saw him see me. I saw him decide to kill me.

Reader, I was and am an emotional wreck. I know I sound pretty suave and together in these writings (see? I'm still funny, at least!), but I'm not okay. I'm angry, reader. I didn't even know how angry, until I realised that Bryce had tried to murder someone in front of me.

Turns out? A lot. A lot angry.

I decided I wasn't going to let Bryce kill me. I decided he wasn't going to kill Miranda. I decided he wasn't getting away with shit. I decided he was completely fucked.

I get kinda focused, when I'm that angry.

Bryce's car was pretty close, but I had just enough room to work with.

I froze time.

When I freeze time, I can still move. Interestingly, I can still move other things, too.

A speeding car frozen in time is a complex physics problem from the point of view of unfreezing and interacting with elements of said vehicle without unfreezing the whole thing.

But what the heck do I know about physics?

Maybe that's why it worked, when I opened the driver's side door. When I adjusted the angle of the steering wheel.

I went back to Miranda. I unfroze time and watched Bryce's car veer wildly and mount the kerb and slew around and stop safely and, shit! Rewind.

This time I got into the car and grabbed the steering wheel. I unfroze time and tried to figure out the trajectory. I had to rewind and refreeze a few times, until I found the perfect angle. I think I would've got it sooner, but Bryce's confused screams and attempts to hit me were distracting.

When I had the angle right, I got out of the car. I unclipped his seatbelt. I broke Bryce's thumbs, too. For luck.

I rejoined Miranda. I unfroze time. I watched Bryce's car veer wildly and slam into a tree. He survived, thanks to an airbag, but he got pretty messed up.

Miranda survived, too.

I got so caught up in dealing with the police, and visiting Miranda at the hospital, and fending off Juliet's attempts to interview me, that I barely even noticed that a week had passed and there had been no storm.

Miranda would have been dead if I hadn't used my powers. I'd saved her, and the universe hadn't retaliated.

I'd found a loophole. I needed to figure out exactly how it worked, though.

* * *

We're almost done.

I started this journal. I quit school. I left my girlfriend. I left all my friends. I headed East.

I studied certain kinds of news stories. I made stops in certain places. I used loops to dig into police files, people's homes, their emails.

I know. Not cool. Bad Max.

I found what I was looking for in Chicago.

I found a man called Louis Pembroke. Louis had gotten away with murder. More than once. And he didn't see any reason to stop killing.

But I only found that out using my powers. And even when I tested to see what would happen if I somehow managed to give the police enough to work with to secure a conviction, and actually put him in prison?

Storm. Because he had already decided on his next victim.

Until I started digging into his life. I'm clumsy, though. Always have been. It wasn't hard for Louis to spot me following him. Or to catch sight of me trying to break into his car. It was easy for Louis to find me. It was easy for him to start following me.

One night he followed me when I made a wrong turn and walked into an alleyway he knew had poor lighting and only one broken camera.

Perfect opportunity.

He cornered me. He showed me his gun.

He wanted to know who I was. Why I was after him. If I'd talked to anybody else.

When I told him that I hadn't, and he decided he believed me, he decided to kill me.

I saw his finger tighten on the trigger.

I froze time. I took his hand and moved it into position. I got clear, and unfroze, and watched him shoot himself in the head.

I threw up in a trash can less than a block away.

I waited a week for the storm to come.

It never did.

* * *

Do you know where the term loophole comes from?

It didn't used to be a legal term. It was a military word. It described an arrow slit in a castle wall.

Later, when muskets were the in thing in killing technology, soldiers would cut holes in walls with their bayonets, so they could fire through them.

* * *

I'm not sure what else to say.

Chloe used to call me her hero. I don't know if she'd say that now. But I think she'd get why I have to do this.

You get it, don't you reader? The loophole, I mean.

I put myself in a killer's path. He decides to kill me. My powers become part of his possibility space. I save myself. And I save everyone else he ever would have killed.

What's that, reader? Wowser! Were you trying to change your mind about killing me?

Were you trying to think about killing someone else, so I can't get you?

What is wrong with you?!

Obviously a lot. Jealousy, for one thing. Killing a young woman with so much potential, just because you resented her?

I already ran my loop on you, reader. I already know everything. I know you were going to do it again, even before I showed up, asking awkward questions.

Oh, did you think you'd rumbled me? Did you think you were clever, tracking me down? Do you still think it's wise, that decision you made to shut me up?

Do you think you'd be reading this if I wanted things any other way?

* * *

Oh, shit! I had to rewind, there. I almost forgot I promised a surprise!

Turn around.


End file.
